All else equal, teachers with more teacher experience seems beneficial. A developing body of research finds teachers with more years of teaching experience increase student growth on achievement tests more than novice teachers (Kini & Podolsky, 2016; Ladd & Sorensen, 2017). New teachers can educate, mere experience does not produce excellence, and teaching is just one of many factors influencing school outcomes, but on average, researchers frequently find a positive relationship between years of experience and student outcomes. Numerous studies have also concluded that the distribution of teacher experience is inequitable. Schools with high proportions of students of color have a disproportionate share of inexperienced teachers.

Several policies and initiatives have attempted to address the inequitable distribution of experience, including the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) and other federal policies that have changed during the period under study (Knight, 2019). State-level policies and analyses in California have addressed the issue of the distribution of teacher experience, including three annual reports in 2015, 2016, and 2017 titled California’s State Plan to Ensure Equitable Access to Excellent Educators. Public pressure, including a high-profile court case challenging California’s staffing decisions, Vergara v. California, may have influenced the distribution of teacher experience. Given the importance of teacher experience and possible changes in recent years, this fact sheet examines the distribution of teacher experience across segregated schools in California.

The analysis used 7 years of school-level student race and teacher experience data in California public schools (described in detail in the Appendix). Four findings are relevant for policymakers and school stakeholders:



Figure 1: Percent of Teachers with 2 or Fewer Years of Experience, By Student Segregation (2012-13 to 2018-19)


Teaching experience varied with student segregation (Figure 1). In all 7 years analyzed, majority white schools had fewer novice teachers than schools with higher proportions of racially marginalized students. In particular, schools with a student composition that was majority non-white or greater had a higher proportion of novice teachers than schools that were majority white or majority white plus Asian. This teacher experience gap doubled from approximately 1 percentage point to 2 percentage points between 2012-13 and 2018-19.

The size of this gap may become practically significant when considering that the effects of teacher (in)experience can accumulate over 12 or more years of schooling. Furthermore, the observed relationship between teacher experience and school segregation may need to be reversed to begin to close racialized achievement gaps. Desegregating schools could also decrease racialized exposure to novice teachers.



Table 1: California Schools with a Majority Novice Faculty (2018-19)

There were 161 schools in 2018-19 where the majority of teachers had 2 or fewer years of teaching experience (Table 1). These schools varied in terms of student segregation, with some schools having no white students to one that was 85% white. More than 0.7142857% of schools with a majority novice faculty were disproportionately non-white (based on a white enrollment in the state of approx. 24%). In other words, there was a high concentration of inexperienced teachers in schools with a high concentration of students of color.

At the other end of the experience distribution, there were 1,712 schools where all teachers had greater than 2 years of experience.



Robustness Checks: Alternative Measures of “Novice”

The finding that schools with the highest proportions of racially marginalized students have the least experienced teachers could be an artifact of how teacher experience was measured. Several robustness checks, however, suggest this is not the case. The educational returns to additional years of experience are likely greatest in the first few years of teaching (Kini & Podolsky, 2016), so teachers with a “few years under their belts” are more likely to promote academic growth than new teachers. Thus, the primary analysis above used the proportion of teachers with 2 or fewer years of experience. However, because some recent reviews of research find that additional teaching experience is associated with student gains into teachers’ second and even third decade (e.g., Kini & Podolsky, 2016), just looking at the proportion of new teachers may not usefully describe the extent of teacher experience gaps. Several alternative measures were created to see if the central finding was robust to alternative measures of teaching experience. Alternative measurements of teacher experience showed similar trends.

Expanding the analysis presented in Table 1 above, the proportion of teachers with 1 and 3 years of experience or fewer was substituted, in separate analyses, for the proportion of teachers with 2 or fewer years experience. The results were similar. Majority white and majority white plus Asian schools had lower proportions of novice teachers than majority non-white, 90-100% non-white, and 99-100% non-white schools. In all alternative measurements, the gap began to widen in 2013-14. When using the proportion of teachers with 3 or fewer years of experience, the experience gap between majority white and majority non-white was approx. 3 percentage points in 2018-19.



Figure 2: Novice Teachers and Student Racial Composition (2018-19)

Each panel in Figure 2 is a scatterplot demonstrating the relationship between mean years of teaching and the percent of the four focal racial groups (in each school). Average years of teaching experience was negatively correlated with African American and Hispanic student enrollment and positively correlated with white and Asian enrollment. The relationship was strongest with black enrollment and rather weak for the other racialized groups (see the blue best fit lines). Pooling the data from 2012-13 to 2018-19 created similar results.



Discussion

This analysis identified persistent gaps in teacher experience across segregated schools. Schools with higher proportions of marginalized racial groups had a higher proportion of novice teachers and the trend worsened over time.

There are multiple possible mechanisms through which teacher experience may improve schooling. On-the-job experience may improve teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, learning goals, and classroom practices. Faculties with greater experience may also have positive school-wide effects through improved support networks and mentoring. Regardless of the specific mechanisms, rigorous research finds that more experienced teachers are associated with improved student outcomes and thus the gaps identified are important.

The inequitable distribution of teacher experience in California mirrors national trends. National research finds that the most inexperienced teachers are clustered in schools with the most marginalized students, with racialized minority students more likely to employ “green” teachers (Cardichon et al., 2020; Knight, 2019). Opportunity gaps across race exist in several types of school resources (Carter & Welner, 2013). One understanding of equitable distribution of school resources suggests that the most marginalized students would receive the most resources to equalize opportunity. Higher concentrations of the least experienced teachers in racially marginalized schools, which the analysis above finds is the case in California, is particularly suspect.

With a growing body of research concluding that teacher experience improves school success, teacher experience gaps across segregated schools constitutes part of an ongoing opportunity gap in California. Efforts to address the distribution of teacher experience have been made in recent decades, yet the trends observed in this analysis suggest different approaches are required to improve opportunities to learn for racialized marginalized children in California.

The results suggest that approaches to improving teacher experience need to account for racial segregation. The evidence presented in this report adds to a significant body of research concluding that equal educational opportunity is thwarted by school segregation. Dealing with school segregation and the distribution of teacher experience simultaneously may produce significant benefits.


References


Cardichon, J., Darling-Hammond, L., Yang, M., Scott, C., Shields, P. M., & Burns, D. (2020). Inequitable opportunity to learn: Student access to certified and experienced teachers. Learning Policy Institute.
Carter, P. L., & Welner, K. G. (2013). Closing the opportunity gap: What america must do to give every child an even chance. Oxford University Press.
Kini, T., & Podolsky, A. (2016). Does teaching experience increase teacher effectiveness? A review of the research. Learning Policy Institute.
Knight, D. S. (2019). Are school districts allocating resources equitably? The every student succeeds act, teacher experience gaps, and equitable resource allocation. Educational Policy, 33(4), 615–649.
Ladd, H. F., & Sorensen, L. C. (2017). Returns to teacher experience: Student achievement and motivation in middle school. Education Finance and Policy, 12(2), 241–279.


Appendix: Data and Measures

Data came from publicly available staff files provided by the California Department of Education (CDE). The analysis covers all school years made available by CDE: 2012-13 to 2018-19.

The following rules were applied to prepare the data for analysis:

The final analytic data set included an average of 8,856 schools per year.

Measure of Experience

The teacher experience measure used was the proportion within each school of teachers with 2 or fewer years of teaching experience (except for the robustness checks). That is, the proportion of schools’ teachers in their first or second year of teaching. Experience, as measured by the CDE, includes prior teaching experience in any school, including outside of California. Experience substitute teaching or classified staff service is not included. A teacher in their first year of employment is categorized by CDE as having 1 year of experience.

Measures of Student Segregation

To examine teacher experience gaps across different types of segregated schools, schools were grouped into one or more of the following categories: majority white, majority white and Asian, majority non-white, 90-100% non-white, and 99-100% non-white. Majority white and Asian included Filipino. Non-white was defined as a sum of all the racial groups provided by CDE other than white (i.e., Hispanic, African American, Asian, Filipino, Pacific Islander, and Two or More races).